Charles and his ironing cart are stationed in an upmarket residential area near Halasuru. A few clothes have been neatly ironed, folded and stacked near a corner of the cart. A customer stops by to enquire about her clothes, he guarantees delivery by the next morning.
“Earlier I used a coal iron box which at times led to trouble. The ember would fall on expensive clothes and create holes in them, and the customer would be infuriated. There have been instances of customers threatening to go to cops if I don’t pay the full price of the damaged garment,” he says.
Mr. Charles’s earnings have improved from around ₹20,000 earlier to more than ₹30,000 a month after using LPG iron box. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
A few months back Mr. Charles switched to an LPG iron box, and things have changed for the good since then for him. It’s cost-effective, convenient and gives a better finish to ironed clothes, so much so that customers are now asking for clothes pressed by LPG iron box, he says. His earnings have improved from around ₹20,000 earlier to more than ₹30,000 a month now.
“If I could iron 100 clothes using a coal iron box in a day, the LPG box allows me to do 150. It’s also less cumbersome. The heat can be controlled, the instrument can be switched off if I must move away from the cart and it doesn’t produce smoke and leave stains on my hand unlike a coal iron box,” he says.
Mr. Charles is one of the many ironing vendors of Bengaluru who switched from coal ironing boxes to LPG ironing boxes in the last few years as part of a campaign called Istri Project by Bengaluru based non-profit Udhyam Foundation.
According to the NGO, across Bengaluru and Chennai, the campaign has successfully converted more than 5,300 ironing vendors from using coal iron boxes to LPG boxes resulting in an average 25% increase in revenue for the vendors.
Narasimha Moorthi engaged in cloth ironing in Vijayanagar. | Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN
Entrepreneurial mindsets
Udhyam Foundation was founded by Mekin Maheshwari, former CPO at Flipkart, in 2017. Krishnan Ranganathan, who joined the same year as cofounder, notes that the organisation was conceived with the idea of finding solutions to the large unemployment problem in the country.
“We still have a very large percentage of people in India aspiring for government jobs. But the actual ratio of applicants to people who get government jobs is about 1:300,” says Mr. Ranganathan.
The NGO’s interventions have been with the idea of creating an entrepreneurial mindset among youth as well as existing nano entrepreneurs. The programme named Udhyam Vyapaar aims to work with entrepreneurs from lesser privileged socio-economic backgrounds earning less than ₹25,000 a month.
Mekin Maheshwari, CEO & Co-founder, Udhyam Foundation. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
“We have been operating by running a bunch of experiments,” says Mr. Ranganathan who runs the programme.
The team experiments with various potential solutions to see what creates income uplift and makes the vyaparees more entrepreneurial in behaviour.
The Istri project
The most successful experiment so far has been the Istri Project. Anybody who converted from the coal iron box to LPG saw an income increase due to both revenue increase and cost reduction, says Mr. Ranganathan.
The team started with a small pilot in Bengaluru during which they converted around 300 people from using coal to LPG. The Covid period forced a pause, and the project was scaled up in the second half of 2021.
But it was not without challenges.
“Before we started this project, the retailers were stocking only coal boxes as there was demand only for coal and electric boxes,” says Mr. Ranganathan.
So, the team had to do a few things in parallel.
One was to create awareness on LPG boxes among the ironing vendors. Parallelly, they had to work with the manufacturers to make more boxes as well as the retailers to nudge them to start stocking LPG boxes.
Reluctant vendors
Sreedharan S., an ironing vendor who works near Cooke town, was one of the earliest to convert to LPG under the Istri project. He remembers how sceptical he initially was about using an LPG box.
“I used to have fears about accidents and cylinder bursts since it works on gas. So, I was weary of switching then,” he remembers.
Krishnan Ranganathan, cofounder at Udhyam Foundation, heads the Udhyam Vyapaar programme. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Another hindrance was the cost.
While a 6.5 to 7 KG brass coal iron box could cost between ₹3,000 to 7,000, the starting price of a 6.5 KG brass LPG iron box is around ₹6,000. The ironing vendor who earns an average of Rs 15,000 a month would not want to invest almost half of their monthly income in a completely new product.
So, the NGO conducted awareness camps and introduced a subsidy programme where 50% of the product cost would be subsidised through CSR. This worked and a greater number of vendors started switching to LPG.
But there were still challenges. For example, Mr. Sreedharan, who switched to LPG boxes about six years back, remembers it was difficult to find replacements for things like pins and regulators for the LPG box then.
“The next phase was market transformation. Most ironing vendors replace their coal iron box every three to four years. When they come for replacement, if the retailer can introduce them to the alternative that is LPG, then that helps. So, we worked with the retailers,” says Mr. Ranganathan.
The NGO has trained vendors on regular maintenance of the boxes and established after-sales networks in Bengaluru and Chennai with the help of gas agencies so that when a vendor approaches the agency to buy a cylinder, they can also get the box serviced or repaired.
Mr. Ranganathan notes that in some areas, the ironing vendors themselves have volunteered to be trained and provide servicing for others in their area.
Cleaner alternative
Replacing coal iron boxes with LPG boxes can make significant environmental impact. According to the NGO, the net difference of carbon dioxide released between a coal and LPG box is about 760 kg per year. That is equivalent to the carbondioxide absorbed by 76 trees.
The switch also helps to save half a ton of coal per year per vendor and the Udhyam team claims to have reduced around 2,500 tonnes of coal usage annually with their intervention.
With a survey done in Chennai recently showing that 97% of those who switched to LPG have stuck with it, the team is planning to scale up the project nationally with the help of partners.
“My personal aspiration is to get to the first city of India which becomes completely free of coal boxes,” says Mr. Ranganathan, who adds that the team is also trying to run a citizen movement.
“Can citizens across India come forward to sponsor their local istri vyapari to convert? We recently launched a citizen movement pilot in Bengaluru. We have worked out various touchpoints such as RWAs, organizations like Rotary Club and also directly through social media and people we know.”
Onboarding street food sellers
After the success of the Istri project, the team is now looking at a bunch of other experiments.
One aims to onboard street food vendors to restaurant aggregator platforms like Swiggy and Zomato. The pilot has commenced in Bengaluru. Having seen success with about 15 vendors so far, the team plans to expand it to about 80-100 vendors in the city and extend to other cities later.
Another pilot project in rural Indore works with people in eight to nine business segments including kirana stores, garments and textiles, biopesticide manufacturing and so on. | Photo Credit: TH
Another pilot project in rural Indore works with people in eight to nine business segments including kirana stores, garments and textiles, biopesticide manufacturing and so on.
“We are trying to see what kind of solution works for each business,” says Mr. Ranganathan.
In the garment business, the team has been connecting the sellers directly to the central cloth market association. This helps to eliminate intermediaries and results in higher profits for the sellers.
When it comes to biopesticides the NGO has been working with groups of women who manufacture it. The pesticides filled in used plastic bottles were earlier sold to farmers for ₹20 per bottle.
“We found that similar pesticides are sold anywhere between ₹250 to 800 in the market. So we tied up with a nearby college. Students came on board to work with the women and helped them with rebranding the product. Now it is sold for about ₹100 in the market and gives them a profit margin of ₹50 per bottle,” Mr. Ranganathan says.
